a lovely man with silver flecks in his hair in a dun brown leather jacket.
The man is lovely, perhaps in his sixties, with silver flecks in his hair. He has on a dark turtleneck and trousers and a stylish brown jacket, the kind that looked mod and hip in the sixties and never stopped being mod and hip. One of the best parts of living on the South Side is seeing the vast array of Black style in efflorescence in a way you never see anywhere else, and I especially love that the man is possibly gay, and one of the best parts of living on the South Side is seeing older queer Black men and women who stopped giving a fuck long ago and walk through their worlds confident in their skins in their hair and in their gorgeous and timelessly stylish dun brown leather jackets.
He has a cane and I have just smiled at him in our mutual solidarity of the caned and it is just before everything tumbles and breaks and we have been told that one of the symptoms is shortness of breath. He stops and shuffles to a hydrant and sits atop it, seeming strained. Are you all right, I ask? Yes, he says, I just felt winded and need to sit for a bit. Do you need any help? I ask and he replies No, but thank you for asking and smiles. I smile back and move on.
The next day, as I walk by the same spot it hits me that if he had been worse and I’d called the number anything could have happened to a lovely man in his sixties with silver flecks in his hair in a dun brown jacket who might have been asked too many questions by someone who decided that the cops needed to be called and they might have taken him away anywhere except where he could get help and where is help to be found now and he could have disappeared, a lovely man with silver flecks in his hair in a dun brown leather jacket.
For more on the Pandemic, see this category.
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Image: Wikipedia